There was that moment, on a night out of the past at Madison Square Garden, at this big, loud basketball time in the city when the Knicks are finally trying to do something at this time of year, when Jalen Brunson did a Clyde thing. Which figured, just because of the occasion.
It was in the second quarter, and it ended the 10-2 run when the Knicks were turning the game, and the night, their way for good. It was Brunson, the guy the Knicks needed even more than they knew, against Donovan Mitchell, the guy they had tried so hard and so mightily to get before they got Brunson.
And Brunson stole the ball.
The most complete point guard the Knicks have had since Walt (Clyde) Frazier picked him pickpocket clean. Donovan was trying to make a move to his left and Brunson flashed out, and now the ball was in his hands and going the other way, the play ending with Brunson actually making a silky dunk to make the game 36-27 for the Knicks.
Brunson had started slowly on Friday night the way his team had started slowly against the Cavs, making only one of his first six shots. But it’s where you finish on big-game nights like this, at the Garden or anywhere else, in the kind of game that can start to turn a series like this your way. So Brunson would finish with 21 points and six assists. The numbers didn’t tell the whole story, the way they so often didn’t with Clyde, when he was the one with the ball and the night in his hands in the old days.
“Don’t expect too many more dunks,” Brunson said in his postgame interview.
“Layups,” another old Villanova guy, Josh Hart, said sitting next to Brunson.
Right before that Brunson had been asked about the atmosphere for a game that had the ridiculously late television starting time of 8:40, but ended absolutely the way basketball New York wanted it to.
“Being in this environment … there is no replica,” Brunson said. “Nothing comes close to it. Just happy to be a part of it.”
Not as happy as Knicks fans are with him. The Knicks are on the verge of actually doing something again in the playoffs, starting with getting to the second round for the first time since they played the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semis in 2013, and there are a lot of people who have brought them to this moment, 2-1 up on the Cavs, getting by the Cavs and maybe giving themselves even bigger ideas than that if Giannis doesn’t get healthy. Tom Thibodeau has never done a better job in his life than he is doing this season, not in Chicago and not two years ago when the Knicks shocked maybe even themselves by going 41-31 in the COVID year for the NBA, getting them to play defense especially when not many teams are these days.
Julius Randle continues, in the words of Buck Showalter about players who show up every damn day, to post up, even when he is less than 100% physically. Role players like Hart and Immanuel Quickley and Mitchell Robinson, starting center and rebounding man, have been fine. RJ Barrett showed up on Friday night in a way that was both timely and important, after not being able to throw the ball in Lake Erie in the first two games of the series.
But none of this happens if Brunson, son of an old Knick player and coach named Rick Brunson, doesn’t come to town. Now he makes you reset the narrative about him and his team, just because it’s the playoffs:
He remains the most important free-agent signing the Knicks have ever had.
Not the biggest name or the biggest star they’ve taken from another team. Not the most glamorous signing they’ve ever made. It is easy to forget that Amar’e Stoudemire mattered a lot when the Knicks were willing to sign him to a big (guaranteed) contract when other teams were worried about Stoudemire’s knees.
But Brunson is exactly what the Knicks needed. On crazy nights like Friday night, somehow his game is as efficiently subdued. The Cavs found all sorts of ways to say afterward that the force of the occasion, and the place, had been too much for them on Friday night. Just not for Jalen Brunson. He is not Clyde, no one would ever say he is, Clyde will always be a legend of the place and the game, in addition to being a two-time champ along with so many other old Knicks.
But he does Clyde things now. He makes Clyde plays like the one he made against Mitchell, the Knick who wasn’t and isn’t. He has changed the way the Knicks play, the way the Knicks look, he has made Thibodeau’s job so much easier because of all that.
“As the great Mr. Frazier would say,” Spike Lee told me Saturday morning, “Brunson was slashin’ and dashing’ and moving’ and grovin’ last night. And had me dancing at courtside.”
Spike knows. Brunson has changed everything. Now he and his team are two games away from winning a playoff series, something that has only happened once before in this century for the Knicks. He’s not the only reason. But still the biggest reason, the game-changer who changed another game on Friday night.
NFL’S GAMBLING PROBLEM, SAN FRAN MAKES MORE SENSE FOR AARON & DRAYMOND DESERVED ONE-GAME BAN …
Sports events on television are thick and lousy with gambling commercials, but now Roger Goodell is going to send a message to his players about gambling?
Him first.
Seriously?
There are times when I feel as if the woman pitching DraftKings on those incessant commercials has moved into our house.
Of course, everybody knows that the only thing separating professional sports from wrestling is the tacit understanding that the games are on the level.
We all get that, and would have rocks in our head not to.
But the commissioner of the NFL can’t have one hand out to his partners at Caesars and DraftKings and FanDuel at the same time he is using the other to slap around players with suspensions.
I know Lamar Jackson has decided he doesn’t need an agent.
But he does.
I know all signs point to Aaron Rodgers ultimately ending up with Our Jets, but somebody has to explain to me why he doesn’t make much more sense for the San Francisco 49ers.
The Jets, as young and talented as they are across the board, aren’t set up to win a Super Bowl next season, even with Rodgers as their quarterback.
But the 49ers sure are.
And last time I checked, the 49ers are in the NFC, where Patrick Mahomes doesn’t play, and Josh Allen doesn’t play, and Justin Herbert, and Mr. Joe Burrow.
Do I need to go on?
Once and for all:
Draymond Green deserved to get the game.
One of the reasons he deserved to get the game was because of priors.
They matter with repeat offenders in sports, and Green, as wonderful a player as he is, is certainly one of those.
In addition to having a very hard head when it comes to controlling himself.
In 2016, he knew that if he did one more thing — one more thing meaning one more technical foul — he was going to lose a game in the NBA Finals against LeBron and the Cavs.
He did one more thing, and got T’ed up, and sat out Game 5 for the Warriors, a home game, when they were ahead of the Cavs three games to one.
It means that him not being able to control himself cost his team a championship.
And it cost them a championship even though he played the kind of Game 7, in a losing effort, that Clyde Frazier once played against the Lakers on the night when Willis limped out.
It’s one of the forgotten great Game 7’s in NBA history:
Thirty-two points for Green in 47 minutes, 15 rebounds, nine assists.
LeBron wasn’t the best player on the court that night, and neither was Kyrie.
Draymond Green was.
But his team lost, and lost a title it should have won a couple of games before that.
So you know what we find out all over again this week:
The guy, despite being a superb all-around player, and team player, doesn’t learn.
You go ahead and have sympathy for him, and say Joel Embiid got off easy for kicking Nic Claxton in the groin (you’d be right about that).
But sing no sad songs for Draymond, who did this to himself.
Again.
Anthony Volpe is a lot of fun, and continues to be a wonderful story.
But he’s going to need to hit.
My pal Barry Stanton said the only thing missing from Game 3 between the Nets and the Sixers was a Kurt Rambis clothesline shot.
And another old pal from newspapers, Dan Graziano, continues to do terrific work talking about the NFL on ESPN, right?
Apparently when it comes to gripping a baseball in these troubled times, there’s sticky, and then there’s Phil Cuzzi sticky.
Sometimes I start to worry that Ron Guidry is going to get another start for the Yankees before Carlos Rodon does.
If it’s my team, and I’ve got the first pick, I’m taking Bryce Young of Alabama all day long.
Brandon Nimmo is playing like a total star, right?
By the way?
The Mets were 14-7 through Friday night’s games without Verlander having pitched an inning yet, and Scherzer having started four games before his suspension and won two.
Maybe that’s why the manager believes about how everybody better get his team early.
I mentioned the great Willis Reed earlier.
You know who will never be confused with him?
Kawhi.
Finally today:
A shout-out to the two April birthday boys in the family, Alex and Zach.
It just continues to be an honor, and a joy, to be their dad.
When they were young boys I would have signed up for the young men they have become in a heartbeat.
Greatest joy of all for a parent, pretty much.
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